


The Burdens We're Willing to Bear

by rayoflight



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Shameless Smut, mom porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 01:50:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1670285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayoflight/pseuds/rayoflight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot.  Here, have some smut to tie you over until September.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Burdens We're Willing to Bear

 

_“You love her.”_

And there it was.

Just three words given voice by the person he was using to avoid the feelings behind them and every brick in that wall of denial he had so carefully constructed fell away.

Katrina said this without malice or jealousy.

It just was.

_“It’s okay, Ichabod.  Until death do us part. We had our time and it was beautiful. If I can no longer be with you, then you should seek happiness with that remarkable woman you’ve found.”_

Crane stood there in this dream-vision gaping, half-embarrassed by her candor and just a tiny bit disappointed that she didn’t seem the least bit jealous.

 _“Oh, Ichabod.”_ she tittered, her voice a light whisper.   _“You have always been very self-centered...even in love.”_

He straightened his rigid posture impossibly tighter and blinked several times before responding.

“Yes. I suppose, I am.”  

He narrowed his eyes.

“Katrina… How is it that you’re here?  I freed you. You crossed over many months ago.”

 _“Yes you did. And you’ve denied yourself the greatest gift given to you, out of some misguided sense of loyalty to your memory of me. Beloved, I saw you interact with her. I saw your bond.  What you have together is_ profound. _”_

“Katrina, we have experienced so many horrors… And she, -she did not come from a place of abundant love and privilege as I have…I worry that I am not what she needs.”

 _“All the better reason to love her well.”_  Katrina stepped closer to her husband.

 _“I am here because I needed you to know that I want this happiness for the both of you.  I need you to move on and stop denying yourself the obvious. You love her, very much. ...and I quite like her.”_  she said with a smile.

_“She doesn’t let you get carried away with your ego._

_I have lived my life, served my purpose and now I shall find peace.  Truth be told Ichabod, we weren’t the healthiest of couples ourselves.  I kept secrets from you, I had a whole other life that I never shared with you. You didn’t truly know me._

_You should experience what joy you can in your burdensome roles as Witnesses… Have you not figured out by now that you were meant for her, -that you are bound to one another?”_

“...but Katrina…you and I.  -I _love_ you and you _love_ me.”

She laughed.

_“Oh, Ichabod. You hopelessly misguided romantic. Are you enjoying your self-imposed honor-bound masochism?”_

Ichabod pursed his lips and furrowed his brow in reply.

_“I did not think it was so. We loved well, no doubt, even with the secrets and lies.  ...But with her, your love will transcend your shared pain. It will carry you through your duties.  It is beyond what we had, -blessed though we were.”_

Katrina stepped forward and peered at him with the utmost seriousness.

_“Ichabod, I knew this day would come even whilst we were together. I knew there would be another. Did not Arthur Bernard tell you of your destiny with Abbie?”_

“Yes...but I did not think he meant-”.

_“-I knew of your part to play with the Second Witness.  -You have been blessed with the gift. You both have. Accept it.”_

She glanced around.  

_“Time is nearly up for me. Please, remember what I have told you. Once I am gone, I will have crossed over completely. You are a widower, Ichabod Crane not an adulterer.”_

She leaned in and placed a chaste kiss on his lips and whispered against his cheek.   _“You both will need whatever joys you can experience in your trials.”_

With that, Katrina disappeared in a shock of blinding white light.

 

* * *

 

 

Ichabod sat in the cabin and stared into the crackling flames of the hearth, pondering his wife’s words.

Abbie.

_Abbie._

He could no longer deny his feelings for her.   He knew on an intellectual level that he should release his guilt as his wife had told him in the vision, but…

That wasn’t the half of his fears.

The shear magnitude of what he felt for her terrified him.  It was beyond the warm depth of security, the haze of lust, and the deep admiration he’d felt for his wife.

His feelings for Abbie shook his very soul.  His entire being shifted to be bathed in her light.  

Grace Abigail Mills.

They were connected on a level he had not known was possible.   He felt her within his very blood as he had with the Horseman.  But instead of deep pull of darkness, he felt himself lifted, sanctified all over again, by her very presence there.

Memories of her warm presence poured over him like baptismal waters…

Her wide-eyed gaze -that of an angel’s.

He could not fathom a world where this remarkably self-possessed woman, -who would likely have been abused and discarded in his own time, could be his.

...And yet, she already was.

They belonged to each other in ways no other human beings had ever belonged to one another.

He had faced down her fears with her in her dreams…

They knew each other’s deepest secrets, courtesy of the mind-crossing the witch Helena performed in order to defeat the demon Azreal.

She knew about Gemma the pretty housemaid he’d lost his virginity with when he was fifteen and he knew about Ms. Bernie the lunch-lady who gave her and her sister extra food because she knew they weren’t eating enough at home.

There were no secrets between himself and His Abbie.

He took a deep breath, a necessity born of the sudden tightness in his chest.

He had to speak to her as soon as could be managed.

* * *

 

Abbie arched her back and rubbed her eyes, her bones giving way with an audible crack.

Sitting on her butt staring at the computer screen at work for hours on end had taken it's toll. But this was the job, filling out reports.  ...The most necessary and tedious part.

Strange.

Usually, Crane would have shown up by now. Instinct lead her to glance at her iphone screen and there blinked one message from Ichabod Crane.

Abbie smiled.  

She loved the thought and formality put into his “aural missives”.

She plucked her bluetooth from her desk, attached to her phone, and listened.

 

> **_Dear Miss Mills,_ **
> 
> **_I trust you have Managed well at Work today._ **
> 
> **_I Apologize for my Absence this morning, but I needed some Reprieve in order to collect my Thoughts._ **
> 
> **_I have had a Great Deal to Ponder of Late._ **
> 
> **_Miss Mills, if you are Amenable, I require your Presence in my cabin this evening.   I assure you nothing of Life-Imperiling Import is the Matter of Discussion, however...I Must have a Word,_ ** **_Please._ **
> 
> **_I remain,_ **
> 
> **_Your Most Humble Servant,_ **
> 
> **_Ichabod Crane._ **

**  
  
**

There was something in his voice that betrayed both trepidation and urgency. She knew she would be leaving early that day.

**  
  
**

* * *

 

She’d arrived at his cabin a full three hours before she was expected.

She knocked and almost immediately the door opened and he stood before her, with his arms crossed behind him.

 _“Crane._ ” she said, staring up at his face.  His eyes were big and bright on hers for a moment, before it became too much and he looked away.

He fidgeted, his entire body vibrating with tension.

“...What’s wrong?”

“Abbie-.”  He closed his eyes deliberately and then opened them again.

“ _Miss Mills_ , please, we should speak inside.” He held out his arm is if to usher her in.

Now, Abbie was terribly worried. The only times Ichabod ever used her first name were when something very serious was going down.

“Please, sit.”

Abbie gave him a good long hard stare before she plopped down in a chair.

Ichabod sat down in one directly across from her.

He closed his eyes again and took a deep breath.

“Ichabod, please tell me what’s going on. You’re frightening me-.”

“ _-I love you, Abbie..._ ”

Abbie gasped.

“There.” he said breathing a sigh of relief.  

“I’ve said it.” He took a took deep breath and wrung his hands before continuing.

“There has always been a place that you were to occupy within me, Abbie.

...I think, I wanted you a little even from the first moment I lay eyes upon you.  You were a strange vision, a commanding woman with arresting eyes, despite your youthful appearance and small stature --in your strange police uniform and undignified trousers…

We have always been connected Abbie, predestined as we were to find each other, but I was wholly unprepared for what I feel, - _nay_ , experience in your presence. I am humbled by it’s radiance. I, -I feared myself lost to the folly of my attempts to make my way in this odd future. But you, _saved me_.  

You saved my wounded heart, and you saved my soul. All whilst asking nothing of me in return. I, a strange bedraggled stranger to you. I don’t _deserve_ you.”

Abbie chuffed in disbelief at what she was hearing.

“Abbie, when first I knew, I felt like such a traitor to my wife’s love,-”

Abbie interrupted him. “When?”

“What?”

“ _When_ did you know?” she gently inquired.

Ichabod rocked a bit, his spindly legs flexing beneath him.

“...At your mentor’s funeral. That was when I became aware of feeling something more. ...Something gave way. You looked so desolate and alone, and God forgive me, - _so lovely_ it took everything within me not to go to you and embrace away every bit of hurt you were feeling. I sought my former wife’s counsel instead.  -That is what I did when my feelings for you threatened to overwhelm any sense of gentlemanly propriety.”

Abbie closed her eyes and smiled.  “I think, I might have suspected. ...Even then.”

Ichabod was nothing if not loyal but it was clear to her from those first tentative moments navigating the gulf of class, race, and time between them that there was something there.  

Ichabod Crane.  A tall angular man with an abundance of hair on his head and face and startling eyes which could be both unusually fierce and soft. Stubborn and honest to a fault. He had no filter when it came to truth. No sense of caution or tact, born of the entitlement that came with his class, gender, and race in his time.

He sat in the those mud caked clothes shackled, behind bars, reeking of the forest, some unknown concoction of his witch-wife’s brew, and his own musk, saying impossible things matter-of-factly, as if he were the only sane man in the room.

She could admit now, that his low voice intoning in that proper British accent and downright pretty face _might have_ swung some things in his favor.

Tall and skinny wasn’t her usual type...but educated, accomplished, warriors were.

Luke knew that.

Ichabod was special.  He was so far removed from the mess of her life, that being with him at first, felt like an escape from it.  Then he listened to her life-story without judgment, followed her into her nightmare (literally and figuratively), and ran into a gunfight, unarmed for her.

She could tell that those pale blue eyes could see things about her that she probably couldn’t even see about herself and yet he respected her enough to not patronize her about those personal bits that mattered so much to her.

 _Yes_ , she loved him. But as protective as she was about her heart, never in a million years would she have admitted that to him.  

Thank God, he was doing it for her.

**  
  
**

* * *

 

 

“Katrina appeared to me in a dream and she told me...that we were meant to be together.  

I called you here to confess this to you.  To let you know that I am yours, body and soul until the end of days or our deaths, -whichever comes first.  Even then, I would fight every mystical being from the afterlife,- snatch your soul from the Heavens to have you at my side. Abbie, I am fit to burst I have so much feeling in my heart for you.  You are - everything, _everything_. Every bit of joy now in my life is borne of your radiance.   _Abbie._ -”

He knelt before her and took her hand, like it was some easily damageable precious artifact.

“ _Please_ , be mine as I am yours.”

He stroked her knuckles and gazed up at her with that soft stare of his, waiting.

Abbie blinked several times...her eyes welling with tears.

“ _Ride or die_ , Ichabod.”

Ichabod smirked at her.

“I have no idea what the hell that means, so please just say _yes_.”

“ _Yes._ ”

Ichabod smiled hugely, bringing her tiny hand to his lips.

“I take it, that as old-fashioned as you are, this means you want to marry.”

“-As soon as possible.” Ichabod replied, without hesitation.

“Does this also mean you want to wait before consummating? Because I don’t think I can hold out that long…”

“I have spent approximately three years, twelve days, and eighteen hours torturing myself in denial of this…If you’ll let me, I won’t waste another second.”

“-Yes, _pleas_ -”  

His lips crashed upon hers before she could get the words out.

She didn’t know what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.  His body as eloquent and ardent as his words, the press of him knowledgable and deliberate.

His long fingers stroked the base of her neck while it seemed, -he devoured her very being in a searing kiss.

Their bodies only had a couple contact points and already she was aflame.

Abruptly, she was lifted in his arms and he was carrying her to the bedroom.

He carefully set her on her feet at the base of the bed and stood back to undo his shirt…

She took her cue and unbuttoned her uniform top, unbuckled her belt and pants, and pulled down the zip.

“It would likely scandalize you to know how often I have imagined this.” Ichabod whispered, as he watched her with lust-filled eyes.

Ichabod stood before her thin and wiry, but taut with lean muscle, with his long-john underpants sitting low on his hips, while Abbie stood in her no-nonsense functional black bra and panties.

Ichabod closed the distance between them and gently pushed her to sitting position on the bed.

He then knelt before her and took her lips once again, as his fingers toyed with the edge of her bra.

 _“Abbie, you could finish me here just with your lips upon mine…”_ he whispered. _“but I could never deny myself the pleasure watching you go first.”_

He cupped her sex in his hand, his palm pressing firmly against her pubis bone, his fingertips dancing and dipping below, just so.

Abbie whimpered...Oh, how long had she dreamed of his hands on her like this… his long fingers between her thighs to toying with her opening, and the sensitive spot above. He worked her like this, with his lips ghosting over her own, his eyes locked with hers while he stroked her hair, his busy hand building her pleasure.

Just when she thought she would lose her mind, he eased up and hooked both hands in the waistband of her panties, dragging the sodden things down her legs.

 _“Please, lay back.”_  he whispered his voice lower than she’d ever heard it.

She obeyed.

He lifted a leg over his shoulder and lowered his head between her legs, inhaling deeply with a satisfied hum, before devouring her.

Abbie felt as if she had been electrocuted. She arched up while he kissed, worshipped these lips as well as he would those adorning her face.  His fingers lightly traced her entrance, while he lapped and sucked her tenderly.

He lifted his head for moment, his eyes blazing and hair wild, watching her face while he pressed two of his fingers into her.

Abbie arched and threw her head back.   _“_ _yes...right there… _”_  _

As she teetered on the very edge of sanity, his lips closed upon her again licking and sucking, while he curved his fingers, and she was gone… taken to a place of pure white hot bliss by Ichabod Crane.

* * *

 

Abbie was still trembling when she felt herself easily lifted and press of him slowly… stretching -filling her like no one else had.

_“Ichabod.”_

_“Abbie.”_  he said as he ground his body against her, just on this side of comfortable, and began to move.

“You sheath me perfectly, my love. Forgive my impatience.” he said and jerked against her possessively.

“...You would allow me your honesty even in this, I wish you nothing but pleasure, but I fear I have been long out of practice and am quite compromised when it comes to you.” he said in a rush, his excitement and desperation giving way in the wake of being inside her.

“Shall I continue to take you with the ardence that I have long wished?”

“God, _yes_ …” she nodded furiously, with an amused grin that melted away as he began to take her in earnest at a depth and pace that took her breath away and slackened her expression. His fingers trembled at her hips and thighs as his long thin body rolled serpentine-like against her own.

God, he felt so good. She never imagined Mr. Stiff Posture could move like this. She felt the terrible-wonderful warmth within her body building again.

“Ah yes. -My Abbie. Oh, how your body grips me.” he huffed through clenched teeth.

“My _Sweet, sweet Abbie_. Oh! Yes! You're mine, now. All mine.”

His possessive words inflamed her. She was slightly shocked by them, despite having witnessed his territorial tendencies.  She had seen the looks he’d given Luke during her short time back in his arms…

Almost as if he could sense her mind’s direction, he pulled her hips onto him at the same time he thrust into her hard enough to knock the wind out of her.

Oh, she suspected he could very well make love, but she had no idea that he could and would take her like this.  She had pegged him the slow gentle lover, not giving her the urgent robust fuck he was giving her now...but given his long internment and the years of sexual tension, she really couldn't blame him.

He touched her where there bodies collided, his lips at her ear whispering filthy pretty things about she had tempted him with her wicked goddess curves in her damnable trousers and how much and how long he had longed to possess them.

He changed their positions so she was impaled upon him in his lap, their faces bare centimeters apart, while their bodies continued to roll and smack together.

-Her body, the stringed ball to his paddle. Holy fuck, this was _amazing_.

Her dirty Ichabod, licked the shell of her ear before whispering once more.

“ _That’s it Abbie, give in to pleasure.  Finish yourself upon my prick_.” and he thrust into her hard enough to stutter her breath, and she shattered around him with a surprised scream.

That was all it took for him to swiftly follow...staring into her eyes, moaning and gritting his teeth while his sweaty brow knitted with the effects of his own pleasure.

After, both sticky with sweat and come, he clutched her tightly, while sighing into her neck and stroking her ass.

“That was _incredible_.”  Abbie said.

“I should think that is an understatement… _My_ _Abbie_.” he said and stroked his thumb along her lower lip. 

“That intercourse was in no way awful.”  she said with a giggle as she twined her fingers in his chest hair.

“--No? Then let’s try a bit harder this time.”  Ichabod said as he flipped her onto her back once more.


End file.
